


Calibration

by purple_bookcover



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: 69 (Sex Position), Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Ashelix Week (Fire Emblem), Background Linspar, Background Relationships, Giant Robots, M/M, Mecha, Oral Sex, backgroud dimidue, background lysinette, background petradoro, background slyvgrid, soul bonding in a giant robot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:19:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27137890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purple_bookcover/pseuds/purple_bookcover
Summary: Felix doesn't co-pilot. No way. No how. In fact, his mech actively rejects anyone who even attempts to pilot with him. So even though the world is under siege by crest beasts and most pilots are fighting as a pair, Felix fights alone.Until the night he finds mechanic Ashe in his cockpit...
Relationships: Ashe Duran | Ashe Ubert/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Comments: 10
Kudos: 31
Collections: Ashelix Week 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Ashelix Week, Day 5: Sci-fi AU
> 
> The explicit part will be chapter 3/4.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Felix is a good pilot, but he always fights alone, unlike his comrades. His mech rejects every pilot who tries to fight with him, until the night Ashe sneaks into the machine.

By the time Felix reached the walls of the city, crest beasts swarmed over them.

He slowed his mech, switching from flying to standing. He towered over the homes on either side of him, his mech tall enough to see over the walls of the city, tall enough to see the horde beyond. 

Crests beasts writhed like an oil slick, clambering over each other in their haste to breach the city. A few were making it over the walls, even as others were struck down while they climbed. 

Felix reached for his hip, drawing a sword. His mech also drew its sword. Felix’s was mostly for decoration. It lent him the weight and thrust of a real weapon. With the mech mirroring his every move as he stood in the spacious cockpit, Felix had to move like it was his own hand on the blade his machine wielded.

In some ways, it was.

In this state, with the cockpit washing him in blue light, the mech humming around him like he was its heart and brain, there was little difference between Felix and his machine. When he opened his eyes, he looked out through the mech’s enormous orbs. Felix flexed the metal arms, feeling his own muscles pull on the machinery. 

He smirked, even as more crest beasts surged over the walls. There was nothing quite like the feeling of being completely in sync with his mech, blurring the lines between flesh and metal. 

Felix dashed forward. All it took was a flicker of intention, then the boosters under his mech’s feet fired, tearing up paving stones as they shot him toward the mass of beasts ahead. 

Felix didn’t touch the ground for the rest of the battle, hovering just above the street, sweeping his sword in wide arcs, slicing through anything that came near. 

Annette and Lysithea helped, weaving their weird magic in tendrils of light and dark that curled around each other before blasting away crest beasts. They operated their mech totally in sync with not just the machine but each other. Felix knew they were dancing around each other in the cockpit, moving in some intricate rhythm only the two of them truly understood. 

Linhardt and Caspar performed a more brutal dance, slamming into enemies artlessly. It was blunt and efficient and Felix suspected Caspar was behind most of it, Linhardt taking control only when necessary, only when it became clear Caspar was about to go too far and needed to be saved from himself. 

There were others, of course. Anyone who’d ever shown an aptitude for piloting the damn mechs got shoved into one and assigned a partner. 

Dimitri and Dedue cleared a path, efficient and silent. It was always impossible with them to tell who was doing what. They were so absurdly attuned to each other there was no difference between one’s attacks and the other’s.

Petra and Dorothea were less mysterious. The swords were Petra; the magic coursing down the blades was Dorothea. Slyvain and Ingrid moved like they were arguing, but it worked for some reason. The tension made them no less deadly. 

Only Felix was alone.

They’d tried to give him a partner, of course, but no one had lasted long with Felix. It wasn’t his fault they couldn’t keep up, wasn’t his fault the mech rejected one pilot and clung to the other. No one suited Felix’s style. That’s all there was to it. Some people were simply meant to fight alone. He preferred it that way.

Especially now, blade free, mech dashing from one enemy to the next. He was unencumbered, able to sprint from one beast to the next. There was no one to negotiate with about where to go or what to do. There was only the task at hand. 

It was a task Felix was very, very good at. Even when the crest beasts managed to swipe at him, it was little more than an annoyance. He felt their claws raking down the mech’s metal arms, but did not heed them. Wires broke. Fuel leaked out like blood. But none of it slowed Felix in his deadly work. 

By the time the beasts finally retreated, Felix’s mech shuddered, falling to one knee in the middle of the street. Petra and Dorothea hauled him back to the base, sighing and scolding all the way. Dimitri was no better. He went on until Felix finally disabled all of his comms, left in the silence of his darkened cockpit. 

He felt the metal braces click into place, supporting his damaged machine. He sighed as he disconnected from the system. It wasn’t a physical connection, but he still felt a shock of electricity, a quick, painful little spark, as he pulled his mind out of the mech. 

The cockpit opened. The hangar beyond was bright. Mechanics were already sprinting toward the machines, pushing carts of tools. 

Felix clambered out of the cockpit and onto the raised scaffolding. He doubled over the moment he was free of the machine, clutching at a sharp stabbing pain in his side. 

“That wouldn’t happen if you had a partner,” Annette said. Even so, she pushed healing into his body, easing the ache. 

It was always like this and she always scolded him for it, even as she healed him. Felix had given up arguing about it. It didn’t matter if it hurt. What mattered was that Felix got the job done, efficiently, effectively, every single time. 

“Clear out, clear out,” the mechanics yelled. 

Annette had to help Felix step aside so the mechanics could sweep through. 

Felix understood their urgency. The crest beast attacks seemed to come more and more often these days. It could be weeks until Felix had to get back into that machine, but it was more likely to be hours. 

“Ashe, take Kyphon.” The head engineer, a large man by the name of Alois, pointed at Felix’s mech. A much smaller man nodded and wheeled his cart before the machine. 

He caught Felix’s eye for a moment, sneaking a glance over his shoulder. It wasn’t uncommon for the mechanics to look at the pilots like that, but this wasn’t the first time Felix had caught this particular one eyeing him. 

“Fix it quickly,” Felix said.

Ashe startled. “Yes, sir. It’s in good hands.” 

Felix just grunted and let Annette lead him away. He’d need to rest. The next battle could come at any time.

#

Felix didn’t realize he’d fallen into a deep, dreamless sleep until he startled awake.

He groaned at the motion. Annette had dragged him to the medical bay and Mercedes had done what she always did for him after a fight, but his side still seized up at the quick motion. The damn mech withdrawals were getting worse, just as everyone kept telling him they would. 

They could whine all they liked, as far as Felix was concerned. It didn’t change the fact that his mech rejected everyone except him. They’d tried this partner thing a thousand damn times; it always ended the same: With Felix getting a nasty shock and his temporary partner getting knocked out cold. 

Felix stood up to ease his aching muscles. His room was dark, but that didn’t mean anything. There was no night and day in the base. If his room sensed the right vital signs, it darkened so he could sleep. As soon as he started moving around, the lights gently brightened. 

Still, when he left his room and entered the hall beyond, he found it dimmed. He really had managed to sleep all the way until proper night, then. He wasn’t usually so drained from a single fight. The crest beasts really were coming faster and faster though. Felix doubted he was the only one worn down by it.

He shuffled down the empty hall, skimming a hand along the wall for balance. He passed the other pilots’ rooms. Most of the pairs shared a room, said it felt more natural after spending so much time piloting together. 

Felix scoffed, even as he turned down a different hall. Sounded like sentimental bullshit. He put it out of his mind. The hall widened, leading to tall double doors that hissed as they opened into the cavernous hangar.

The mechs stood silent and dark, rows of hulking shadows in the dim hangar. The walkway was still raised up high, its default placement to make it easier to get in and out of the cockpits of the machines. A couple mechanics’ carts stood abandoned, the tools atop them scattered and messy. 

One such cart still waited before Felix’s machine. Even in the low light, he could see lingering damage on the mech. Probably operational, though. The mechanics always patched up the highest priority bits first. If a call came in the middle of the night, Felix still had to be able to get out there, damaged or not. 

A clang echoed through the room. Felix crouched instinctively. The sound had come from directly above him. He listened, straining, and heard soft muttering and another metallic clink from inside his cockpit. 

Felix narrowed his eyes. No one was supposed to get inside that cockpit except him, not unless it was absolutely necessary. It could throw off the entire balance of the machine, the delicate mixture of technology and magic that made human-machine fusion possible in the first place. That innovation was currently the only thing standing between humanity and the crest beasts, so if someone was in that cockpit throwing it off, it could have truly devastating consequences. 

Felix climbed the couple rungs up to the open cockpit as quietly as he could. It wasn’t far, but he went slowly, unsure who he’d find in the cockpit and whether he’d have to fight them. He should have brought something with him, a wrench, a screwdriver, anything, but it was too late now; he was perched at the lip and rising up to peer over it. 

A man hunched over one of the panels in the cockpit. The panel stood open, wires on display like exposed intestines. 

Felix abandoned caution. He rushed up the last rung and into the cockpit, grabbing the intruder by the collar before he could do more than squeak in surprise. 

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” 

The man in his hold trembled, green eyes going wide, a tool clattering out of his hand. It was the mechanic from before – Ashe or whatever. He still had grease on his hands and flecked onto one cheek. 

“C-calibrating,” Ashe said. 

“What?” 

“I was calibrating it.” 

Felix looked around. Panels and buttons blinked like lazy eyes winking in the dark. The panel that was disconnected was some sort of temperature control system. 

“Why?” Felix growled.

“The balance is wrong,” Ashe said.

Felix tightened his hand, sorely tempted to take offense at that. 

Ashe seemed to realize that. He rushed on. “He’s not responding to you as quickly as he could.”

“He?”

“The mech. Kyphon. He’s slow. Not by much. A fraction of a second. But it means the calibration is just that much off and … I thought...” 

Felix hesitated. He wouldn’t admit it aloud, but Ashe was right. Kyphon _was_ sluggish. It was nearly imperceptible. In truth, Felix was surprised anyone but him had managed to notice, but that extra fraction of a second would make Felix even deadlier. He’d considered bringing it up, but there’d never been time, especially with the frequency of the attacks increasing. 

Felix was still debating whether to release Ashe or not when the cockpit closed with a hiss.

“What was that?” Felix said.

“I don’t know,” Ashe said.

“What do you mean, you don’t know? What did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything.” Ashe put up his hands as though to prove his innocence.

Felix let go of him to slam at the button that should have released the cockpit hatch. Instead of opening, however, the lights in the cockpit flooded on, bright and glaring. 

“What the fuck did you do to my machine?” Felix said, whirling toward Ashe.

The mechanic was shaking his head, mouth hanging open. “I-I didn’t do anything. I swear. I was just just trying to tighten up the calibration.” 

“Well now it’s fucking turning on,” Felix said, “and it doesn’t look like I can stop it, so I hope you were planning to fly tonight.”

Ashe blanched. “I’ve never … I’ve never even tested to be a pilot. I’ve never been in an operational mech.”

Felix cursed under his breath. He tried manually overriding the controls, but the damn machine just kept whirring, a low, menacing drone like the hum of an order. 

Then he felt it. The spark. The trickle of awareness pushing in alongside his own thoughts. 

The feeling was familiar. The machine was giving Felix control, asking to be piloted, creating a “spiritual connection,” if Felix was the type to believe in that sort of thing (he wasn’t). It was the feeling he experienced every time he piloted, the merger of his body with the metallic form around him. 

But this time, he and the mech weren’t alone. 

He could feel the other presence there. It wasn’t a shock like the mech. It was quieter, smoother, like a hand gliding into his, fingers interlacing with his own. 

It was Ashe. 

Felix tried to look for him, but he was seeing through the machine now and somehow he knew Ashe was as well. He could feel Ashe’s emotions – fear, surprise, disorientation. Something within Felix reached out on pure instinct, offering comfort, surety. 

Something shifted. If Felix and Ashe had been standing apart before, now Felix held Ashe by the shoulders, steadied him. He wasn’t sure how it happened. It wasn’t like moving his physical body, yet he felt Ashe reach back, reach for Felix’s presence, for his very being, seeking solidity among the dizzying sensation of connecting with the machine. 

They were moving. It took Felix a moment to realize it. In the past, Kyphon had always obeyed his will. Moving the machine felt like moving his own body. But the mech had its own designs this night. It rose out of its restraints, flying slowly toward the doors of the hangar, doors that opened at its command.

Then they were out in the night air, rising higher and higher, soaring over the sleeping city beneath them. 

Panic clogged Felix’s throat – Ashe’s panic. Again, he did that thing, that unconscious steadying thing, like squeezing a shoulder, pressing reassurance into a clasped hand. Ashe immediately calmed under the mental touch. 

That wasn’t to say Felix himself wasn’t panicking. 

This shouldn’t have been happening. This shouldn’t have even been possible. No one had flown with Felix before, partly because he didn’t want them to and partly because it was physically impossible. The machine always bucked them right out of the cockpit. But Ashe, some random mechanic poking around where he didn’t belong, was melding so seamlessly into the consciousness of the mech that Felix had to concentrate in order to find the edges between them. 

It was terrifying.

Where there should have only been Felix’s body controlling the mech, there was also Ashe. It wasn’t like having two arms. No, when the mech’s arm moved, Felix knew it was coming. Ashe’s thoughts were also his own, swirled together like paint being mixed. There were still slashes of color that were only Felix, but they were becoming harder and harder to pick out among the hue they’d created. 

He slipped into it, fell into the swirl of colors, the heady mix of sensation that resulted in a single sleek metal body curling up into the night sky. Felix saw through the eyes of the mech, saw endless heavens freckled with stars spread before him like a shimmering veil. And just when the height was beginning to make his head swim, the mech tilted back toward gravity, back toward the dark shapes of the city, the quiet homes and closed up shops and hulking mass of the military compound. He saw the pockmarks in the damaged walls, but the open land beyond was quiet. Neither crest beasts nor ordinary animals stirred. For now, the world seemed almost peaceful. 

Felix didn’t realize they were picking up speed until they swooped low over the city and shot out into the wilderness beyond. A thrill rose in Felix’s chest. Or Ashe’s. Or the machine’s. There was no difference anymore. One’s excitement quivered through all of them. 

Felix wanted … he wanted speed. He wanted to _go_.

Distantly, he knew this desire was new. Yet it unlocked something trapped within him, sent him chasing after it. He – they – pushed the mech faster. They skimmed over the tops of the trees, clipping off branches. The world rolled and swelled beneath them. Seen from here, passing so quickly, with this delirious blend of heightened sensation, it was beautiful. 

Beautiful.

Felix had never thought of this world as beautiful before. He’d thought of it as a battle, a constant struggle, bloody and vicious. 

Sadness chased that errant thought. His own. And Ashe’s. Somehow, he knew that wonder, that awe, that sense of beauty had started with Ashe, but it seeped through him, painting his perspective, rewiring his thoughts, swirling into his blood until it was indistinguishable from his own atoms. 

He gasped. They all gasped. It was the first breath Felix had ever taken, the only breath he’d ever need, pure and deep and containing so much more than just air. Their laughter was the rustling of the leaves. Their sighs were the gurgling of deep, mountain-fed rivers carving through the land. Their joy was starlight, twinkling, bright in the dark, fleeting but all the more beautiful for that. 

It was too much. 

The machine jerked. Maybe it was Felix, but there was nothing that was purely Felix anymore. No thought was simply his own. The tightening in his chest was the tightening in every chest. The tears springing to his eyes pushed up out of every throat. 

Whatever was still Felix felt like it might shatter soon, lost in the blur of this spinning pinwheel.

He hardly felt it as they returned, as the machine slowed, as the sturdy, cold arms of the restraints in the hangar gripped the mech and guided it to its resting position.

The cockpit powered down. The lights within dimmed. 

Felix collapsed to his knees. 

He steadied himself by putting one hand on the floor of the cockpit. With the other hand, he covered his eyes, hiding the dampness at the corners. 

Felix shuddered in a breath. It belonged only to him. Somehow, that was both a comfort and a disappointment. He continued covering his eyes, willing the feeling to pass, waiting for the nausea of having three bodies and one to settle. It wasn’t a shock this time; it wasn’t painful. It evaporated out of him like mist burning off in the sun and finally, slowly, Felix was left with only himself. 

He exhaled a long breath. His chest eased. When he removed his hand from over his eyes, he felt steady, but somehow also empty, like he hadn’t eaten all day. He stomach clenched around the lack, but he could not feed it what it longed for just then. 

He heard a shaky gasp beside him. Felix looked over and saw Ashe on his knees, gaping at the cockpit. Where Felix had hidden his tears, Ashe’s flowed freely down his cheeks. He smiled despite it, looking at the cockpit the way Felix might look at a new sword: utter wonder, pure delight. 

He glanced aside, catching Felix watching him. His shining cheeks were a strange inverse of the night sky, his skin bright from the wetness and his freckles serving as dark pinpricks. 

“It was so beautiful,” Ashe said. 

Something within Felix clenched. A warning. If this were a fight, he’d fall back on defense, wait for the blow surely about to come. 

As it was, he jerked to his feet and rushed for the edge of the cockpit. 

“Wait,” Ashe said. “I’m sorry.” 

Felix said nothing, swinging a leg over the edge of the cockpit to climb down. He leapt to the scaffolding, rushing away before Ashe could call out for him again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really wanted to finish this for Ashelix Week but it is too complicated. It will have four total chapters and chapter 2 is well underway. So more is coming soon!
> 
> I don't have a set schedule for uploading this. I'm just going to finish it as soon as I can. Probably within a month.
> 
> \---
> 
> I'm on Twitter (18+ please).
> 
> I respond to every comment. Thank you, friends!


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The commander orders Felix to fight with Ashe. Felix resists, even as the call to fly back out into the battle blares through the base.

Ashe lingered in his mind. 

It was like gum stuck to his shoe. No matter how he scraped, some tenacious bit of residue remained. 

Felix knew Ashe felt it too. He passed him once on the way to some battle and their eyes locked for a single, horrible moment. Felix’s heart slammed against his chest. Time warped and stretched. His mind tried to slide away, tried to slide toward Ashe until Felix yanked it away, stumbling as he rushed toward his machine. 

Even days later, as Felix paced the halls of the base, it clung to the edges of his thoughts, a mote sliding out of view every time he tried to look directly at it.

He shoved it out of mind. Being summoned by the commander was trial enough; he didn’t need added distractions. 

Hydraulic doors hissed open. Felix stepped into a large office. It looked like a relic of an earlier time. Instead of metal, most surfaces were made of wood: Wooden bookshelves, wooden desk, wooden floors even. It smelled of paper and vanilla and dust. 

Felix wrinkled his nose at the falseness of it, looking at nothing in particular as he waited with his hands clasped behind his back. That allowed the glow at the far corner of the room to catch his eye.

Several stones sat atop a low pillar, encased in glass. They glowed red, steady and constant, watchful.

The commander glanced quickly at Felix before going back to the map he poured over with his lieutenant. Gods, even the paper was actually paper. What a waste when they could just as easily use a holographic map that would allow them to view the battlefield with realistic approximations of terrain elevations. 

“Thank you, Lambert,” the commander said. “We can resume later.”

The lieutenant straightened, blinking when he noticed Felix. A tall blonde man, he looked uncomfortable in the stiff uniform of his rank, but Lambert’s piloting days were far behind him. 

“Very well,” he said. He offered the commander a nod before exiting.

The doors hissed again as they closed. Felix’s shoulders tightened, but the commander just leaned back against the table with the map spread on it, relaxed and casual. He even unbuttoned the high neck of his uniform. 

“Felix,” he said.

“Commander--”

“Please, can you just call me father? Even ‘Rodrigue’ would be better.”

“You’re my commanding officer,” Felix said.

Rodrigue sighed, but gave up the familiar debate. He cut directly to the point.

“I know about your little joyride the other night,” Rodrigue said.

Felix tensed, squeezing his hands behind his back. He tried to keep his face neutral, but it was likely a lost cause. He awaited the admonition and punishment sure to come. Pilots weren’t supposed to fly without cause. It wasted fuel and potentially put them in danger. Going out there alone in the middle of the night – and with someone who wasn’t even a pilot – was stupid and reckless. Felix couldn’t even disagree with his father. He prepared to accept whatever consequences came his way.

“Your sync rate has never been that high,” Rodrigue said.

Felix’s eyebrows quirked up, as much as he tried to keep his face placid. 

Rodrigue pushed away from the table, taking a couple steps closer to Felix. “It was that mechanic with you, wasn’t it?” he said. “The footage shows him getting into the cockpit to do repairs shortly before you arrived.” 

There was no point denying it now. “It was an accident. I didn’t mean to fly. I heard someone in Kyphon and went to investigate.”

“I’m not scolding you, son,” Rodrigue said. “I’m asking you to do it again.”

“What?”

“We want to get that mechanic, Ashe, into pilot training.”

The blood drained from Felix’s face. “He’s not a pilot though. He hasn’t flown a day in his life.”

“He’s flown once,” Rodrigue said. “And it was the best Kyphon has ever operated. It was almost responding faster than you could think. We saw it all the next day on the reports.” 

Felix clenched his teeth. That feeling of bleeding together, of mixing like paint until they were a single, indistinguishable color – to imagine that quantified somehow on charts and graphs grated at him. Felix didn’t know why it turned his stomach, but he couldn’t reconcile the feel of that flight with the reports his father probably had stacked on his desk. 

“Felix.” Rodrigue set a hand on his shoulder and Felix jerked. “We’ve never managed to give you a partner. We’ve never found someone who worked. And you’ve suffered for it. We all have. You could be better and we all know it.”

Felix ignored the sting of those words. “I fight alone.” 

“Not anymore.” 

Rodrigue moved his hand from Felix’s shoulder to his chin, gripping him like he was still a small boy throwing a tantrum.

“Don’t forget what we’re fighting for,” Rodrigue said. “If the crest beasts ever get those--” He jabbed a finger at the red stones glowing in the corner. “If they ever get over those walls and steal those stones, all is lost. This isn’t about you. It’s about the whole city, the last bastion of humanity.”

Felix wanted to spit. He settled for stepping away, freeing himself of his father’s hold. “I can protect the city alone.” 

“You can’t,” Rodrigue said. “Or have you forgotten how Glenn died?”

Felix pressed his lips into a thin, hard line. Glenn was the only person who’d managed to fly with Felix for even a brief time and it had cost him everything. 

The mission should have been simple. Just another fight. But the civilians hadn’t cleared out and Glenn had insisted on going down to help them. That was the moment they tore apart, breaking the connection, perhaps damaging Kyphon’s ability to merge pilots permanently. 

When Glenn left him, it had been like tearing out a piece of Felix himself, casting it aside. He still felt the lack sometimes, piloting alone, reaching unconsciously for that steadying other presence in the mech. 

That was gone now. Glenn had made his choice. He’d helped the civilians – and been torn apart by a crest beast in the process.

And Felix had piloted alone ever since. 

“Fuck you,” he snarled at Rodrigue.

“This is a second chance, Felix. We never dared hope you’d get an opportunity like this.”

Oh, so they’d simply assumed he was permanently broken instead. Charming. 

“You _will_ pilot with him,” Rodrigue said. “This is not a request.”

“I--”

The blare of the emergency lights cut off Felix’s protest. He almost welcomed the sound. It meant he could leave, _had_ to leave. 

He turned, but even as he started to flee the office Rodrigue shouted after him. 

“Do not go out there alone.”

Felix didn’t reply. Rodrigue’s shouts followed him down the corridor, but were soon swallowed by the rush of pilots and mechanics streaming toward the hangar. 

The commander’s office was far from the hangar, about as far as possible. Felix had to twist through hallways awash in blaring red light. By the time he reached the hangar, all of the other pilots were there, most of them already in their mechs. Petra and Dorothea were gone entirely, only the smell of fuel giving away that they’d been here recently. 

“Where were you?” Annette called, pausing at the lip of her and Lysithea’s mech. 

Felix didn’t bother answering. Even in the crowded, bustling hangar, full of pilots leaping into machines and mechanics shouting orders and shoving carts, he heard Annette huff something at his back as he ran past her and toward Kyphon. 

He stopped short. 

Ashe stood before the mech. Ashe. Dressed as a pilot. 

“Felix,” he said.

Felix brushed past him and made for the ladder up into the cockpit. 

“Wait,” Ashe said. “I’m coming with you.”

Felix stopped, twisting to snarl down at Ashe. “Like hell you are.”

“It was an order from the commander himself,” Ashe said. 

“I don’t give a fuck what that old bastard ordered,” Felix said. “I fly alone.” 

Ashe blinked, chewing over the words. Felix saw his eyes widen with realization the moment before he turned back around and climbed the rest of the way up into Kyphon.

“Wait,” Ashe called from the ground, “he’s your--”

“Yes,” Felix said. He leaned over the side of the cockpit. “And he’s full of shit. You aren’t a pilot.”

That stalled Ashe’s determination. He fidgeted, uncomfortable and unsure, and Felix almost felt bad for the sharpness of the rebuke. But it was true. Ashe _wasn’t_ a pilot. He’d never trained for it. A fluke flight late at night would not prepare Ashe for what was waiting out there right now. He was more likely to die than to be any help to anyone.

Felix turned away while Ashe yet hesitated and smashed the button to close the cockpit. Muffled shouts sounded on the other side of the machine, but Felix was closed in now, the rest of the world muted. A sharp sizzle snapped at his mind as he connected with Kyphon, yet it was almost a relief. It was only _his_ mind this time. When he took off and flew out of the hangar, it was just him and the mech, no distractions, no feelings that didn’t belong to him, no new perspective with which to gape at the world in wonder and awe and pick out every fragile, beautiful thing Felix had never bothered to notice.

He shook himself hard enough that Kyphon rattled as it flew. Stray strands of Ashe’s consciousness must have been lingering in the machine.

Felix concentrated on the task at hand. A writhing black mass soiled the horizon. When he drew closer, Felix saw a tumult of crest beasts clambering over the walls, spilling into the city like ink down a page. Gods, there were so many. He’d never seen so many in his life. They were screaming and leaping and clawing with a mad, wild ferocity. 

Something had changed. Felix knew it even before he waded into the battle. No matter how much he swung and swung and cut, there was always another crest beast waiting for him, another monster leaping at him, swiping at his mech, prying at the machinery. 

One drove a claw right through Kyphon’s leg and Felix screamed, a reverberation of the mech’s damage spiking through him. Pain was supposed to be a warning, a signaling system, but this was too much. Felix dropped to a knee, fighting from the ground.

Annette and Lysithea swooped in, unleashing a blast of purple-black magic that created a small breath of space in the oozing mass of foulness assaulting the city. They dragged Felix back to his feet. 

“How bad is the damage?” Lysithea said.

“It’s fine,” Felix said. “I can fight.”

“Don’t lie about your condition,” Annette said.

“I’m not lying. I can fight. We don’t have time for this.” 

Both women grumbled, but eventually released him. It was true. They didn’t have time. Caspar and Linhardt were swinging wildly, cleaving through crest beasts, but barely making a dent. Dimitri and Dedue drove forward, slamming monsters against the walls of the city, but more just clambered in. 

Everywhere his comrades fought, they were slowly and steadily being overwhelmed. Even with every available pilot fighting as hard as they could, there were simply too many of the beasts. 

If this was it, though, Felix resolved to die fighting. 

He charged in, flying in order to stay off the damaged leg. It probably wouldn’t hold the machine’s weight anymore and that put Felix on a timer. The moment he couldn’t fly, it was over. 

Even so, he dashed in, sword sweeping out as he pummeled into waves of crest beasts. They beat against his mech like hail, denting and damaging everything they touched, yet they died on his sword all the same. Sylvain and Ingrid were a whirlwind beside him, a deadly vortex of twirling spears that made it seem like their mech had eight arms instead of just two. 

Something dropped from overhead. It landed heavy on Felix, interrupting his momentum, smashing him to the ground. 

He was overwhelmed in an instant. Felix lost sight of Sylvain and Ingrid. He lost sight of everything as a dark mass of wretched beasts swarmed over him and encased him in living darkness. 

The blows came from every side. Warning systems blared feebly, but there was nothing Felix could do to help Kyphon, nothing he could do at all. He felt each strike – in his chest, in his head, in his side. Soon, he was lying atop his machinery in the cockpit, trembling with pain, wheezing from some strike to his side. 

A claw piercing the cockpit. This was it. They were really coming through. They’d pluck him out of Kyphon and tear him limb from limb. Like Glenn.

Felix readied his sword. At least he could die fighting. The blade was sharp. Not as sharp as it could be, but sharp enough to hurt the beasts before they killed him. That had to count for something. 

A claw carved a deep gash in his cockpit. The beast pried the metal back. A twisted, snarling face peered through, long tongue lashing out to test the air. Felix cut it off, sending the beast shrieking and reeling, but two others immediately replaced it. They hissed at him, teeth like razors gleaming with spittle. One slithered inside. It swiped at Felix, but he swung right back, cutting its arm. 

Even as it shrieked, its companion moved in. Felix wasn’t quick enough. He didn’t have space or time. The crest beast barreled into him, throwing him back against the controls, knocking the sword from his hand. Felix screamed as a claw pierced his flesh, hot, bright pain driving into him. 

And then a noise arose, a sound like thunder. If the crest beasts had been hail against his mech, this was entire boulders falling.

He heard crest beasts screaming, heard the scrabble of their claws as they attempted to flee, though he got the impression many did not make it. 

A massive mechanical hand pried his cockpit open wider. The crest beast spearing Felix hissed, but that hand snatched it, dragging it away. 

Felix screamed as the claw left his body. His hands flew to the wound, even as his body sank down. 

Dimly, he knew Petra and Dorothea shook off the rest of the crest beasts. He knew Dorothea leapt into his mech and tried to heal the damage to his body. He knew they dragged both Felix and Kyphon back to the base. 

But the details began to blur, going soft around the edges. It hurt. It hurt so gods damn much, even with Dorothea’s healing. Something in his core was horribly, horribly damaged. There seemed to be no end to the blood pouring out of him. Felix knew they pried him out of his mangled mech and put him on a stretcher, but even before they reached the medical bay the world was sliding away from him. 

He only just had time to see Mercedes gasp before healing magic dragged the last of his consciousness away.

#

Felix dipped in and out of awareness for days. 

The amount of healing magic required to put him back together drained him to the bone. He couldn’t stay awake for longer than a few minutes at a time those first few days, and even those sparse minutes were a struggle. His eyes would burn, begging to close, begging to drop back down into that endless darkness so his body could recover. 

Even before the breaths of consciousness got longer Felix knew something was wrong. He caught brief glimpses of other pilots being carted in, caught little snatches of dire conversations.

It was getting worse.

Even in his half-conscious state, Felix knew it was getting worse. He didn’t need to hear the specifics to know they were losing the fight out there. 

Thus, late one night he dropped his bare feet to the floor. He had to sit a moment at the edge of the sickbed to steady himself, but it had only been a week. He could still do this. 

His middle protested when he stood up straight. Mercedes had said something about a puncture wound, “lucky it didn’t hit an organ,” that sort of thing, but even if there was still a crest beast claw through his fucking heart, Felix wasn’t going to go on lying around while everyone else fought. 

He hobbled out of the medical bay. It was empty this time of night. The staff relied on … well, they relied on no one really _wanting_ to leave when they were unable to. They relied on sick and injured people acting reasonable, but Felix didn’t care about reason. He cared about getting back out there and winning this battle before it cost humanity its last stronghold.

When he made it through the dark halls all the way to the hangar, he was not surprised to see someone waiting for him. 

“Ashe,” he said.

The silhouette at the other end of the platform nodded. 

Felix paced forward, trying to hide the pain each step caused, though he was sure Ashe wasn’t fooled. Ashe was dressed as a pilot again, a tight leather bodysuit with pouches and sensors built in for detecting vitals. It fit him perfectly, which meant...

“You trained.”

Ashe nodded. “You were right. I wasn’t a pilot, but I am now.”

“You can’t become a pilot in a week.”

“That’s true,” Ashe said. “But a week is all I had.”

Felix pressed his lips into a thin line. Ashe didn’t look like he was going to budge. 

“How bad is it out there?” Felix said.

“Very.”

“Losses?”

“None yet,” Ashe said, “but it’s been a near thing. This can’t wait. I don’t have time to get the proper training. There won’t be a city to protect if we don’t start protecting it now.” 

As though on cue, the lights blared red.

They didn’t have much time. Any moment, pilots and mechanics would come rushing in here to get into the mechs. They wouldn’t let Felix fly, not like this, not holding his side and wearing a medical gown that left his ass hanging out. To anyone who walked in right now, Ashe would look like the only pilot in the room. 

“Fine,” Felix said. “Let’s go.”

It was insane, absolutely insane. They’d flown together once. Ashe had a week of training and Felix was still injured. Absolutely nothing about this situation was a portend of success. 

Yet Ashe just nodded, climbing up into Kyphon with Felix right behind him. 

The cockpit closed around them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know exactly when I'll write the next part of this. Soon-ish! It is all outlined. I just need time between other things to write it.
> 
>  **Next time:** They finally fly together. The bond is ... intense.
> 
> \---
> 
> I'm on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/purplebookcover) (18+ please).
> 
> I respond to every comment. Thank you, friends!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Any other time, Felix would fight alone.
> 
> This time, he fights with Ashe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I SAID I'D FINISH THIS SO I'M FUCKING FINISHING IT.

Any other time, Felix would have felt the sharp zap of connecting to Kyphon. Any other time, he would have eased through the pain as his mind sank into the machine. Any other time, he would have flexed his fingers around the hilt of his sword, preparing to cut down enemies on his own.

Any other time, he would have been alone.

This time, his mind slid away, tangling with Ashe’s, stirring together like paint mixing until every streak of color that was only Felix faded and obscured. 

They blasted out of the hangar, careening toward the battle their companions already fought. Felix forgot his pain, his injuries, his anger. It blurred like the scenery of the city dripping past the display at the front of the mech. 

A teeming mass awaited them, a writhing cloud of foulness. Here and there, flares of light lit that bubbling stormcloud flowing into the city, crashing over the walls. It was all the others, Annette and Dedue and Dorothea and all the rest. They fought, but it was clear how the beasts overwhelmed them. 

The sword? The image of his familiar blade slid through Felix’s mind, but when he reached for his hip and drew, that was not the only weapon he found. Two additional arms unfolded out of Kyphon, holding a bow. 

Ashe fired – they fired – even as they charged toward the crest beasts. Glowing arrows like bolts of light punctured the mass of enemies, blowing away whole chunks of that roiling storm. Even when they reached it and their sword cut through the foulness, arrows continued to fly. 

It was so easy, more a dance than a fight. Some thread of consciousness still anchored Felix to his own body. With it, he knew he wove around Ashe in the cockpit, slashing low while Ashe shot over him, swinging around behind him and standing back-to-back to protect their flanks, moving in perfect concert. 

It had never been like this with Glenn. They’d been partners, brothers, but being one limb each resulted in mere proficiency. This was so far beyond proficiency. He and Ashe weren’t separate limbs that added up to a coherent whole; they were the beating heart of this machine, its soul, its lifeblood. They were one and the same, a single entity, inextricably entwined. They were Kyphon.

If it was like this, if Felix could fight like this every time – they just might save humanity. 

Already the tide receded. Their allies broke through, chasing off crest beasts. 

Felix wondered if it was like this for them, as well, if this is what they’d felt every time, the reason they so rarely left their co-pilot’s side even back at the base, the reason they could not bear to live in separate rooms once they synced. 

A soft laugh in response. Ashe’s. It was answer enough. 

_We’re leaving now._ Felix did not say it so much as feel it and it only partially belonged to him. He did not need any sign or signal of agreement. He could taste the expectation, the sharp tang of awakened senses. 

They kicked away, dashing toward the hangar. Never had docking seemed to take so, so very long. Their bodies ached, but not with pain. The anticipation burned along pathways tangled like fingers interlocking. 

When Kyphon released them, Felix gasped, but not from pain. It was, rather, the loss of connection, the un-stirring of paint. He could stay submerged in that mixture for the rest of his life, but, abruptly and horribly, his mind was his own again. 

He put a hand on his chest to steady himself. When he looked over at Ashe, he found green eyes watching him, waiting, oddly dark in the quiet cockpit. Almost amber thanks to the shadows. 

They did not speak. Some tendrils of connection yet loitered and they leapt out of the cockpit and hurried back down to the hangar, chasing every lingering trace. Mechanics shouted questions and wove carts around them, rushing to repair any damage to the mech, but neither Felix nor Ashe heeded them. They pounded out of the hangar and into the halls, breathless by the time they reached Felix’s room. 

The dark had a confounding effect, as though their minds were still tethered and twined. Once that door closed, once the automatic lights lowered, they may as well have still been in that cockpit, their very souls linked like roots growing around each other. 

When they fell to the bed, Felix struggled to tell his body from Ashe’s. It was all one and the same as they groped and kissed and rolled, reaching for anything they could touch, any bit of skin they could grasp or taste. Clothing fell away in a frantic rush, those tight, efficient suits peeled back to strip them both down to their essence. 

Felix found Ashe’s body unsurprising. After being inside his mind, it was nothing to feel his skin, to taste his sweat. Still, Felix relished the journey down his torso, savoring Ashe’s gasp when Felix fit his cock into his mouth. 

Ashe tangled his fingers in Felix’s hair as he rolled his whole body to match the bob of Felix’s lips. 

Yet it wasn’t enough. Felix knew it even as he took Ashe as deep as he could, swallowing around his cock. It wasn’t enough for one of them to be like this. They needed something more. Their bodies had to twist together the way their minds had, the way their minds still did in secret, quiet little corners. 

The thought hit them both at once, naturally, and Felix rose up just to turn around. When Ashe got Felix into his mouth, Felix did the same in return. Their moans shivered through their connected bodies, echoing inside each of them. 

Felix lost track of which mouth was his, which hands, which cock. It was all the same as they writhed around each other, licking and sucking, one’s pleasure indistinguishable from the other’s. There was no need to announce their peaks or bother pulling away for propriety. They drank each other down, swallowed whatever the other had to offer, then rolled only far enough apart to rest on their backs, hands still entwined. 

It wasn’t the end, not that night. They roused themselves again when they could, bodies stirring the moment the heat rebuilt inside them. 

They tried everything they could, hands and mouths and everything in between. Ashe sat on Felix and rode him with bucking hips. Felix licked into Ashe until Ashe nearly wept from the stimulation. They used everything available, searching for that deeper closeness they’d felt within the mech. 

Then, they slept. 

In their mingled dream, they were back in the machine, back in Kyphon and piloting it through the city. Felix knew immediately this was no mere reverie. He looked over at Ashe and saw not a shadowy dream apparition but keen, bright eyes. Whatever was happening was happening to both of them. 

They swept over the city. Sometimes, they fucked right there in the cockpit, overcome by need even in the midst of the vision. Whatever was showing them these scenes of the city did not seem perturbed by the detour as Ashe and Felix explored all the ways they could indulge in each other inside that mech. But eventually even their imaginations were exhausted from the flurry of exertion. 

They clasped their hands as the mech flew on, standing close to the windows. The city teemed with foul beasts, but something was wrong, something was different. These weren’t crest beasts as Felix had ever known them. 

“What are they doing?” Ashe said.

Felix shook his head. The senseless chaos he witnessed on the battlefield had a pattern here. The beasts moved in a coordinated formation. But how? If they were really the mindless creatures Felix had always been told they were, then what were these intricate displays of cohesion? 

“How did I never notice?” he said.

“What?” Ashe said. He squeezed Felix’s hand. “Felix, I can feel you, but I can’t read your mind when it’s so unclear.”

“They’re...” But it was too strange to name. He floundered for words. “They’re … organized.” 

Ashe narrowed his eyes at the crest beasts outside the mech. After a moment, he sucked in a sharp breath. “You’re right. They aren’t moving randomly at all. How did we never know?” 

Felix shrugged. “I don’t know. It never looked like this before. Is this … real?” Even as he asked, he felt the answer inside his chest. He knew Ashe felt it too. 

“How?” Ashe said. 

The dream shifted and warped. It was like they were still flying inside Kyphon, but so impossibly fast that the world streaked by like a paint splatter. When it stopped they saw... 

“The stones?” Felix said. 

They weren’t in Kyphon. Rather, they stood now in Rodrigue’s office, hands still intertwined. 

Rodrigue sat at his desk. He straightened when they entered, but his gaze passed right through them. 

“Felix, look.” 

He followed where Ashe pointed. The red stones in Rodrigue’s office pulsed, as Felix had seen them do plenty of times, but again a sort of order crystallized among the chaos. The way they beat, the timing of each echo of light...

“It’s not random,” Felix said. “None of it.” 

Ashe looked to him. “What does it mean?” 

Felix opened his mouth to respond, but the landscape shifted again, flashing by so quickly it snatched away his breath. He gasped as he awoke lying in bed beside Ashe, their hands overlapping. They turned immediately toward each other. 

“Is it...?” Ashe said.

“We need to go,” Felix said. 

They sprang out of bed, gathering their discarded clothing. Felix’s hands trembled as he contemplated what they had to do, the path that had opened before them.

#

Rodrigue was sitting at his desk just like in the dream when Ashe and Felix barged into his office. He jerked upright, shoulders rigid. 

“Felix, what—”

“We know,” Felix said. 

“What are you talking about?” 

“Are they still out there fighting?” Felix said.

“Yes,” Rodrigue said, “no thanks to either of you. What are you doing here while they’re still fighting? They need your – Felix. Stop. What are you doing?”

Felix stormed through the office once he locked onto the red glares of those enigmatic stones. He plucked one off its stand, raising it high. Rodrigue shouted behind him and pounded toward Felix, but before Felix could smash the hateful thing it pulsed in his hand and he stumbled.

Beasts writhed before his vision. Except … it wasn’t quite writhing. He saw the order to it, the rhythm. They weren’t crawling wildly and blindly; they moved in a pack toward a singular goal, the prize Felix held aloft. 

Felix stumbled as the vision passed. He knocked against the pillar the stone sat on, bracing against it to steady himself. 

“Felix, hurry.” 

He looked up through bleary double vision to find Ashe restraining Rodrigue, wrestling with the commander to keep him at bay. But both he and Felix were depleted from piloting so recently, their bodies still adrift from the pull of the machine. Ashe wouldn’t be able to hold Rodrigue off for long. 

Felix took his chance while he could, slamming the red rock down to the floor. It shattered with a crash, wails erupting from its jagged heart. Rodrigue screamed just as loudly, thrashing in Ashe’s hold. 

“You idiot,” Rodrigue howled. “What are you thinking?” 

Felix reached for the next one, shattering it even as Rodrigue punched Ashe square in the head and broke free. 

Felix just managed to grab the final stone when Rodrigue tackled him to the floor, sitting on his torso and pinning his arms down. 

“Fool,” he spat. “You’ll ruin everything.” 

“You knew,” Felix shot back. “You knew you were calling them here and you kept these fucking things anyway. What were you thinking?” 

“You really don’t know anything, do you?” Rodrigue said. “How do you understand the connection to the beasts but not the connection to the machines?” 

That made Felix pause. “What?” 

“The mechs, you stupid boy,” Rodrigue said. “How do you think they work? How do you think that connection works? Do you imagine we have enough power here in this city for them?” Rodrigue snorted a laugh. “Not even close. If we had to power those things ourselves the entire city would starve. We’d have nothing left, not a drop.” 

“But...” Felix said.

“But nothing,” Rodrigue shouted in his face. “Those stones are our only lifeline. Without them, the mechs do not work.”

“The beasts won’t attack, though,” Felix said. “This is what they want. If it’s gone, there’s nothing here for them.”

Rodrigue did not respond to this last, just snarled down at Felix. 

Realization arrived like a creeping tide. The mechs were powered by the stones. The connection he felt in Kyphon, the connection with Ashe, it was all because of these damn shiny rocks. Without the stones, there would be no mechs, no connections, no pilots. No crest beasts.

And no need for an organization solely devoted to fighting them. 

It was all one and the same. The mechs existed because the crest beasts existed. The crest beasts existed because the stones existed. The stones existed because the mechs existed. They would all crumble together, Rodrigue’s entire empire, broken into harmless red shards. 

“That’s all this is?” Felix said. 

“That’s all?” Rodrigue said. “That’s _all_? Without us, the city loses its heart and soul. What would they do with us gone?”

“Something,” Felix said. “Anything. Whatever they want.”

“We are the foundation of this place. They don’t know how to live without our command.”

Felix didn’t see Ashe move. He didn’t hear him approach. All he knew was that one moment the stone was in his hand and the next Ashe held it high.

“Then they’ll learn,” Ashe said. 

He shattered the final stone.

#

A soft hand rubbed Felix’s bare shoulders. He turned over, grumbling, sheets rustling around him. 

The hand returned, stroking his skin, rubbing his back in soothing circles. Heat brushed his neck as lips traveled along his throat to his ear. 

“You can’t sleep all day,” the sweetest voice he’d ever known said. 

Felix sighed, but it was a breath of utter contentment. He turned toward that voice like a flower leaning toward the sun and forced his eyes to open. Ashe lingered over him, smiling, bright as the sunrise with his silver hair falling around his face. 

“This was a lot easier when our minds were still linked,” Ashe said. 

So many things were easier back then. Even after the stones were destroyed the connection lingered for another week, like a ghost still loitering in their minds. When Ashe woke, Felix woke, pulled along by the current of his life’s rhythm. When Ashe was hungry, Felix was hungry. When a tingle of heat fluttered in Ashe’s belly, Felix dragged him away, his body responding immediately. 

Yes, things were easier then, but easier wasn’t necessarily better. 

Felix pulled Ashe down to him. His lips were familiar, but they had the power to surprise now. He didn’t know Ashe’s every move in advance. He could delight in Ashe’s reactions in a way he couldn’t before. 

Ashe snuggled in against him. “I made breakfast.”

“I don’t really eat breakfast,” Felix said.

“I know, but I made it anyway.”

Felix kissed the top of his head. “Then I’ll eat it.” 

Ashe laughed against him. “Do you have to work today?”

“Mm,” Felix said. “But I can go later. There’s no rush.” 

“I’ll help too.”

“You have your own work,” Felix said.

“I know,” Ashe said, “but we need every hand we have.”

Felix couldn’t argue with that. All of Rodrigue’s fears had come true – and more. The crest beasts left, evaporating like smoke, never seen again. But they left behind prodigious wreckage: Smashed sections of wall, hulking carcasses, destroyed neighborhoods. With the mechs permanently out of commission, the task of cleaning up after them fell to ordinary human hands. 

All the pilots were pitching in, but it wasn’t just them. The whole city was working to rebuild. And not just rebuild, but reimagine life itself. 

Felix, for example, had never lived anywhere but the base. Having a place like this, a home for himself and Ashe that was completely disconnected from the military – it was the sort of life he’d never imagined. 

He glanced aside, out of the wide windows that led from their bedroom to a balcony overlooking the city. Already people moved about on the streets, carting away rubble or beginning the day’s baking or simply searching for a place where they could be of use. It was amazing how cooperative they became when their overlords were gone, hulking machines and military ranks replaced by simple human effort.

So much work to do. So much difficult, hard, unpleasant work. Yet Felix couldn’t suppress the hope trilling in his chest.

He pulled Ashe down atop him, tasting his lips all over again. They were so different now, so exciting, so new every time. He didn’t know instinctively whether Ashe had eaten anything, how long he’d been up, what his body temperature was. He couldn’t see in his mind’s eye every little factor that went into the flavor of each kiss.

“How long until the food gets cold?” Felix murmured against his mouth.

“Hmm,” Ashe said. He kissed his way to Felix’s ear. “Long enough, I think.” 

Felix flipped them over, eager to explore Ashe anew, to experience him for the hundredth and the very first time all over again. To be surprised by every noise and move and moan. To be human with him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Seriously, though, sorry this took forever.
> 
> \--
> 
> I'm on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/purplebookcover) (18+ please).
> 
> I respond to every comment. Thank you, friends!


End file.
